Jaguar Land Rover chief says US plant to be decided within three years

According to CEO Ralf Speth, if British luxury automaker Jaguar Land Rover is to keep expanding in the next years it would definitely need to establish an assembly facility in the world’s largest premium auto market – the United States.

The automaker, currently owned by India’s Tata Group seeks to keep growing and wants to stay competitive on the highly dynamic world market, but it also needs to first have a vehicle that would sell at least 30 to 40,000 units annually in order to have the US facility covered. Additionally, the chief executive of the company added that if the automaker produces a vehicle in the United States, that model would essentially need to sell in large number on the market. He added that Jaguar Land Rover’s target is to avoid exporting a large number of the US-built vehicle to other markets. So far, the brands are falling short of the targeted level of sales for the US market to sustain a production facility there: last year the best-selling US model was Land Rover’s Range Rover Sport with just under 18,000 autos.

The British automaker is another pioneer in the use of aluminum, with Speth adding the production levels of the group hinge on a healthy supply of the lightweight metal as the company intends to use it extensively and aluminum powertrains are scheduled for all the vehicles of the two premium brands. The executive added that after the introduction of the new Ford F-150 pickup truck, which also has an aluminum body the supply and quality of the material is likely to improve in the United States as more automakers are expected to use the material for their own vehicles.